


a lovely mess

by moodyreindeer



Category: Arrow (TV 2012), Supergirl (TV 2015), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Human, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Mild Sexual Content, Multi, OT3, Polyamory, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-11
Updated: 2016-12-11
Packaged: 2018-09-07 19:55:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8814184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moodyreindeer/pseuds/moodyreindeer
Summary: Barry has a habit of liking the ones most likely to hurt him.





	

**Author's Note:**

> title from 'a lovely mess' by front porch step.
> 
> excuse this mess. and blame the recent spark of karivarry headcanons on tumblr.

Barry loves and hates being roommates with Oliver Queen.

After a year of living with the older man, Barry had been sure the thrill of excitement and mild arousal would fade once he got used to seeing Oliver on a daily basis, but it is the beginning of his junior year and he is still ridiculously enamored at the mere sight of him.

Barry is confident he could say that he is even more attracted to him than when he first moved in; a year of seeing each other every day and growing close enough to be friendly has done nothing to deteriorate Oliver’s appeal. It has, however, served as an excellent insight to all the ways someone like Oliver - whose friends are athletic, confident, rich, and gorgeous - would never take an interest in someone like Barry.

Desperate, Barry schedules his classes around his need to be out of the apartment as much as possible. He schedules morning classes and fills his afternoon with his paid internship at STAR Labratories, only stepping foot into the apartment when he knows Oliver is shadowing his father at Queen Consolidated or taking one of his few scheduled afternoon classes. It makes him pathetic, he knows, and it is an honest surprise that Oliver has yet to corner him about the piteous stench of desire Barry trails through the apartment.

“Haven’t seen much of you, lately,” Oliver comments offhandedly one day. It’s nearing noon; Barry just finished his two morning classes and was praying Oliver would have already left the apartment once he got home, but as always, he is not so lucky.

“Yeah,” Barry says, trying for a smile. It falls flat, landing into a grimace that he imagines looks as painful as it feels. Instead of attempting to smooth over the rough awkward moment he’s just created, he looks into the dark brown depths of his coffee mug. 

“What are you doing?” Oliver asks as he shrugs into his leather jacket. He toes into his shoes next, reaching up to adjust his collar. 

Barry sighs, running a hand through his hair.

“Trying to find a class for my gym credit,” he says, dismayed.

Oliver looks up, raising an eyebrow. “Just take nutrition like everyone else.” 

“That’s my problem - everyone else is taking nutrition, so I’d be on the wait list until the second semester of my senior year.” Barry taps his pen against the printout his counselor had helpfully provided him. “Maybe I’ll just do something lame and easy, like ping pong.” 

“That’s a uniform I’d love to see you in.” 

Barry’s head snaps up, cheeks flushing a flaming red before he can try to tamper it down. Oliver either doesn’t notice the affect his comment has made, or doesn’t make a big deal of it, tossing a nonchalant, “ _Later, Barry"_  over his shoulder as he exits.

Barry later finds out from a friend of a friend who took ping pong last year that the uniform is a shirt and short shorts that were too small on anyone who wore them, and he tries to picture his gangly legs sticking out of tiny red shorts: the image is twice as awkward and uncomfortable as Barry predicted to be, making him cringe. Why the hell would Oliver want to see such a sight?

 

 **: :** **:**

 

When Barry isn’t spending his time meticulously planning escape routes to avoid the presence of his roommate, he’s wishing someone would just smite him down in the middle of Organic Chemistry. It’s almost sad how difficult it is for him to elude the presence of attractive people he has huge, earth-shattering crushes on. If he isn’t in the apartment with Oliver Queen, then he’s on campus with the one and only Kara Danvers.

Kara, unlike Oliver, is both attractive and approachable. Her popularity as co-captain of the dance team does nothing but brighten her disposition, which could outshine the sun on an average day.

Barry wouldn’t have even considered speaking with her if Kara hadn’t recognized him in the library and slid into the seat across from his, worrying her lip and asking him for help with their upcoming write-up at a speed so fast he could only stare dumbly and nod.

Ever since, Kara’s slid beside him in the lecture hall, occupying the space usually left empty or filled with his bag with the rays of her sunny disposition, greeting him with a megawatt smile that melts his insides.

“Morning, Barry!” she addresses him now. Barry looks up with a smile of his own.

“Hey, Kara.” He reaches over to clear his notes, allowing Kara to set down two coffee cups.

“You like dark French Roast with sugar, right?” Kara holds out one to him, tilting her head. Her eyes flicker from the cup in her hand to his face, the corners of her mouth dangerously twitching downwards. “I couldn’t remember if you took it just black, but I knew you definitely didn’t take it with cream, so I just kind of guessed. I hope it’s alright?”

Barry takes the cup gingerly, a pleasant buzz spreading from his gut until his entire body inhibited its own hum. 

“Yeah. I’m surprised you remembered.”

Triumphant, Kara settles into her own seat. She shrugs out of her rain-slicked windbreaker and retrieves her laptop from her bag.

“Would you mind proofing my write-up?” she asks, fingers already beginning to blur across the keypad.

“I’ll see if I can look at it tonight and get it back to you tomorrow,” Barry promises. It’s automatic, his need to please. It’s pathetic - _digustingly so_ \- but the smile she shoots his way, laced with warmth and gratitude, is worth it.

“That’d be amazing! Thank you so much.” Kara leans over to lightly squeeze his wrist in her hand, just for a moment, then returns her hand to her side.

The hum crescendos until it’s a white noise that lasts throughout the entire lecture. He doesn’t catch a thing Professor Stein is spouting about, which he’ll undoubtedly pay for later, but his head is swimming delightfully and his wrist burns where her hand encased his skin. It’s so, so worth it.

 

**: : :**

 

“The answer’s simple,” Cisco says. He takes out Tootsie Pop and waves it like a wand.

“I’m sure it is,” Barry says miserably.

“Just don’t -” Cisco pauses for dramatic effect “ - ever come out of your room." 

“Ugh.” Barry face plants into his Fundamentals of Genetics textbook. 

“Switch to all online classes,” Cisco continues, spinning around on his barstool. “Set up a mini fridge. And you already have your own bathroom, so it’s not like you have to worry about that…”

“Not. Helping.”

 

**: : :**

 

“Hard at work?”

Barry looks up from his laptop to where Oliver stands, closing the front door. He toes off his boots and nods his head at the array of notes Barry’s surrounded himself with.

Barry drags a hands across his face, exhausted. He’s only been studying for an hour, but he’s barely made any progress.

“More like hardly working,” he retorts, glowering at his papers sourly.

“That bad?” Oliver steps closer, into the dull yellow lamp light that fills the living room. He casts a raised eyebrow around Barry’s setup, mildly amused.

“Yeah…” Barry leans back. His hands reach up to run through his hair, stopping at his neck to frustratedly grab the hair at the nape of his neck. “I think I’m just going to call Kara over.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Oliver stiffens. 

“I mean, is that okay?” Barry turns to him, frowning slightly. “Do you have people coming over?”

This, while not unusual, meant that Kara couldn’t over and that Barry would have to move his entire operation to his bedroom - a process that was a serious pain in the ass when he has already set up camp in the living room, but he would do it. 

“No,” Oliver says, but he’s different. Stoic, almost. “No plans tonight.” 

“So, Kara can come over?”

“Sure, yeah.” Oliver turns and goes into the kitchen, walking like a wire hanger is set in between his shoulder blades.

Barry watches him disappear into the kitchen with a furrowed brow, but only lets his gaze linger a few seconds longer before grabbing his phone to text Kara.

She responds with a promise of being over soon and a long line of smiley faces and exclamation points. See it light up the screen is enough to make his face ache with how big his smile is.

As promised, there’s a knock on the door ten minutes later. Kara’s on the other side, flushed and holding up a takeout bag. 

“I brought potstickers,” she says sheepishly. “I figured we’d need brain food.” 

Barry feels the buzz return, his insides threatening to turn to putty. “You’re amazing.”

Kara beams as she steps inside. 

“I’ll go get plates.” Barry excuses himself once Kara’s settled on the couch, neatly draping her windbreaker and lining her shoes against the wall.

Oliver is still in the kitchen, leaning against the counter and gripping a beer in one hand and scowling at the fridge.

Barry pauses in the action of grabbing a few paper plates.

“Are you okay?” Barry asks slowly.

“Fine,” Oliver growls, never lifting his gaze. 

“Okay, it’s just that you’re staring at the fridge like it tried to attack you.” 

“It’s nothing, Barry.”

Barry feels compelled to say more, but the dark look on Oliver’s face wills him to leave it at that.

Kara’s flipping through his notebook when he returns, the takeout containers lined up in order of size at the edge of the coffee table.

“Something wrong?” she inquires at the line formed in between his brow. 

Barry shrugs, trying to relax his features. 

“No, Oliver’s just in a mood, I guess.”

“Oh.” Kara’s own face scrunches for a brief second, the closest Barry has ever seen her to looking disconcerted. “And that’s unusual?” 

“I mean - “ Barry rubs the back of his neck. Oliver is known for looking more intimidating than he really is, and Barry’s usually spared from ever seeing the extent of one his moods. But it doesn’t feel right to tell Kara this, especially when Oliver’s attitude always seems to sour when she comes over. Barry could say vice versa is true as well - Kara, the physical embodiment of aspiration and sunshine, seems to darken the slightest at any mention of the older man. “Sort of, I guess.” 

“Hm.” Kara stabs unnecessary hard at a potsticker. “I would’ve thought otherwise.” 

Barry blinks. “Um…” 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Oliver retorts, appearing faster than Barry can blink.

“Wow, eavesdrop, much?” Kara snorts, shoving a potsticker into her mouth.

“If you didn’t want to be heard, than maybe you learn to speak quieter.”

“Maybe you should learn not to lurk around corners.”

“I live here!”

“And we’re studying!”

Barry watches, conflicted, as Kara rises to her knees and glares at Oliver over the back of the couch. It’s the meanest he’s ever seen her look, and it feels wrong to find it attractive in this moment with a thoroughly angered Oliver slowly moving closer.

He has seconds to diffuse the situation. He knows Oliver has the restraint needed to keep from starting a fight, but Kara also easily ticks him off, and she can throw a punch as well as she can take one. Oliver would definitely fight a girl who could fight back.

“Let’s get drinks!” is what comes blurting out.

However random, it works. Kara turns away from Oliver to blink at Barry, the angry flush in her cheeks slowly fading. “What?” 

Barry ducks his head. “Well, it’s not like I can have my roommate and my study partner trying to kill each other every time they’re in the same room.” 

Also, if they do start a bar fight, at least the apartment will be spared.

“I don’t know,” Kara says, turning to give Oliver another once-over.

“Come on.” He looks at them with the saddest, most pitying face he can muster. “Just one hour?”

“Barry,” Oliver sighs. Barry ignores the way his heart skips a beat at the sound, because now is really not the time to his obsessive, lovesick self.

“Half an hour?” he hedges. “If it turns out to be the worst thirty minutes of your life, you have total permission to take my house key and lock me out in my underwear.” 

The comment wins a twitch, but nothing more as Oliver sighs again, fixing a scowl on the wall.

“Half an hour,” he practically snarls. Barry beams.

 

**: : :**

 

The campus bar is an underrated joint that’s rarely visited by anyone who actually has the money to spare going to somewhere decent, but Barry thinks the usually shoddy ambiance fits the mood the three of them drudge in carrying. Both Kara and Oliver look like they’re inmates on death row, and their looks only worsen when Barry excuses himself to get them beers.

“Haven’t seen you in a while, Mr. Allen,” Sara greets him as he wanders up.

“Hey, Sara,” he addresses the bartender, relieved to see a friendly face. “How’s it going?”

“As slow as ever,” she reports with a leisure nod around the establishment. “Not that Alex and Maggie are complaining. I don’t think those two have come up for air since they clocked in.”

Barry waggles his eyebrows, smiling goofily. “Jealous, Sara?”

Sara whacks him with her dish towel. “I have men and women lining up out the door for me, sunny boy, and don’t you forget it." 

“Must be nice,” Barry mutters dryly. As Sara disappears to get their order, he takes the opportunity to check on his two companions.

They managed to score a table in the back, both of them seeming to be in one piece, just the way he left them. Kara’s head swivels as she looks around the room; Oliver’s on his phone, keeping his ducked in order to evade any attempts at conversation directed at him. 

“Thanks, Sara,” Barry says once the blonde returns with their order. He slips her a ten and makes his way back.

The silence grows palpable as Kara awkwardly sips her beer and Oliver keeps sparing glances at his phone, looking ready to kill the next person he sees just for something to do.

After tossing back half his bottle in a single gulp, Barry does what he’s best at: mindless rambling to combat the growing tension. He talks about everything and nothing, trying to hit topics all three of them can discuss, but it’s hard. He’s ready to pass out from lack of air when something hits; beer nearly come flying out Kara nose as she lets out a loud, unattractive snort.

“He really said that?” she giggles. Barry gives a slight shake of his head to refocus his brain back to the story he’d been telling about Professor Hunter, one of the most easily flustered people on campus.

“Yeah, but can you blame the poor guy?” Barry grimaces at the memory. “Snart and Rory are pretty hard to compete with.”

Kara gives another snort. “HA! That reminds of this time when I was in Calculus…" 

She launches into an anecdote about her and a few of her friends who had to deal with the worst substitute their freshman year, leading to a myriad of stories about professors and classes all around the table. Barry feels especially triumphant when Oliver chimes in with a few stories of his own, looking considerably less irritable than when they walked through the door. Barry’s beginning to think his stupid idea was actually creating some progress between two, when his phone chimes.

He excuses himself to an abandoned corner to take the call. “Eddie?" 

“Hey, Barry.”

Barry’s brow furrows at the sound of his tone. “What’s up?” 

A sigh drags out. “Wally’s in the hospital.”

“What? Is he okay?” Barry demands, pressing his phone to his ear until the metal threatens to mold with the side of his head. 

“Yeah, yeah, he’s fine. Just did a number on his car and got himself a few cuts and bruises. He’s gonna need stitches, and they want to keep him overnight in case he has a concussion.”

“Are Joe and Iris - ?” 

“They’re already here. Joe’s pissed, and so’s Iris, but they’ll cool down once the doctors and nurses are done fussing with him. But Iris thought you should know. Should I tell her - ?” 

“I’m on my way,” Barry promises. With a word of goodbye, he shoves his phone into his pocket and makes his way back to the table. 

“Is everything alright?” Oliver asks as soon as he sees his face.

Kara sobers immediately, squinting her eyes at him in concern. “Barry?”

“Everything’s fine, but I need to go. Wally did another stunt and landed himself in the hospital, so I should go down there and meditate for him.” He glances at the table uncertainly. They’ve been here for a good hour or so already, but he doesn’t know how quickly the common ground they’ve been treading will dissipate once he’s left. “Are you two gonna be okay here?” 

For a moment, he fears the worst. A spontaneous bar fight, complete with beer being splashed around as bottles are busted over heads.

But a short, courteous nod from Oliver quells his rising nerves. The older man shares a single look with Kara before he looks back to Barry. His eyes are soft around the edges as he says, “We’re good. Go make sure everyone’s okay.” 

With a glanced spared back at the two of them, Barry leaves, rushing out the exit.

 

**: : :**

 

Barry spends the better part of three hours doing coffee runs and mediating between Wally and Joe. Iris was spent from yelling her spiel by the time he arrived, making his job much easier as he attempts to calm down Joe’s parental tirade. But Barry wastes no time telling Wally how incredibly stupid he was in his own words. 

“Is the adrenaline really worth snapping your neck?” Barry asks him.

Wally, on his part, sounds genuinely contrite as he responds, “I’m always careful, Barry.” 

“I’m not worried about you,” Barry says with a sigh. “It’s the other idiots you chase around in that car of yours that worries me.”

“We all know what we’re doing,” Wally insists, but he loses credibility as he says it with seven stitches keeping a massive cut on his arm closed.

“I’m sure you do,” Barry sighs wryly. Then he leaves, off to fetch his second cup of coffee in as many hours.

He leaves once visiting hours end and Joe doesn’t look at explosive as he did when Barry first got there.

Barry contemplates taking a bus back to the bar, but the evening’s events have exhausted him so thoroughly that he simply hails a cab to take him back the apartment. 

He drags himself up the three flights of stairs to their apartment, keys at the ready in his hand. As he’s unlocking the door, Barry so wrapped up in fantasies about his favorite pajama bottoms and the feel of his blankets that he misses the bodies thoroughly entangled on the couch until the moaning reaches his ears.

He stops dead in his tracks. Everything stills as his focus becomes morbidly moored to the couple on the couch. He recognizes two of them instantly, from Kara’s citrine dress to Oliver’s army green henley, and distantly labels the pain erupting in his chest as a combination of soul-crushing rejection and heart-stopping sadness.

“Oh,” is all he can manage to let out. A poor, inaccurate representation of the onslaught of misery washing over him in that moment.

Barry doesn’t stick around to see if they heard him, or what they could possibly say to him. He just runs. He takes the three flights of stairs at double the speed he climbed, throwing his heartache into every step until he’s run all the way to the dorms.

Even as he’s knocking on Cisco’s door, tears stinging the corners of his eyes and making the world a blur, he thrums with the need to keep running, not stopping until his entire body is numb and void of this sadness, this rejection, this utter sense of loss. A sense of loss that is terribly misplaced, he tells himself bitterly, because never had either of them to begin with.

Cisco opens the door and takes one look at his wrecked face. “Oh, _dude_.” 

He steps aside and Barry practically falls through the doorway, stumbling until he can rest his shaking body on the well-worn couch in the middle of the room. He cradles his head in his hands as he finally unleashes the ugly sob that’s been building in the back of his throat.

One of the many things he loves about Cisco is that he doesn’t push for details, no matter how badly he’s dying to know every single one. They both know Barry will tell him eventually, but now isn’t the time. Not when everything is still fresh and raw.

“Harry Potter or Doctor Who?” Cisco holds up both box sets.

Barry sniffs, rubbing furiously at his red-rimmed eyes.

“Harry Potter,” he says wetly.

Cisco’s eyes widen. “ _Dios_   _mio._ This is worse than I thought.”

Barry holds off until a third of the way through Chamber of Secrets before finally telling Cisco about the night. He makes all the right noises at all the right times, never reacting beyond loud, harsh gasping.

When Barry finishes, he slumps against the back of the couch, breathless and suddenly exhausted.

“Dude,” Cisco mutters finally. “We’re going to need ice cream.”

Barry manages a small laugh as Cisco gets up to call Caitlin, telling her that her presence, along with a pint of cookie dough ice cream, was requested in room 204, effective immediately.

She’s over in record time, bare-faced and in sweats, armed with ice cream and a sympathetic smile.

Crammed in between Cisco and Caitlin makes the gaping hole in chest shrink, albeit minisculely. He balances the ice cream in his lap, staring unfocused at the TV as he robotically spoon big chunks of cookie dough into his mouth. His friends do their best to distract, making lame jokes about the other interns at STAR Labs and giving their commentary on the latest TV shows they’ve binged.

He loves them for it, but it fails to cheer him up any. He cries a little more, the stinging rejection mixing with the embarrassment he feels over making such an idiot of himself. Here he was, sobbing uncontrollably over something he’s expected all along. The majority of the time he pined after Oliver and Kara was spent building an impenetrable wall of self-deprecation to protect him from the fatal heartbreak he would feel when they found their equally attractive, more socially partners. Instead of protecting him, the wall came down and buried him alive.

Barry spends the rest of the night in a vicious cycle: depressed with the fact that he now has to live with a crush who’s hooking up with his other crush; angry at himself for thinking they owed it to him, when they owe him nothing, because they were just living their lives; but most prominently, tired of being depressed and angry, but unable to stop. 

He eventually tires himself out enough to crash on the couch, his entire body cool with the chill of a pint of cookie dough ice cream and his face raw with tears.

 

**: : :**

 

Barry wakes early the next morning, the sun just beginning to flood the room. Cisco still hangs over the side of the couch, passed out with his spoon still dangling from one hand; Caitlin took the floor, and remains there, covered in a blanket and snoring softly.

He makes a note to thank them with a big breakfast feast at their favorite diner as he tiptoes out of the room. Dread is quick to pool his stomach as he begins the trek back the apartment. He blames his dragging feet on the early hour, but knows he’s just trying to protect himself from the inevitable.

When he arrives, the apartment is still. He stands in the middle of the living room, listening to distant drone of noise as the person below them starts their day. There’s a melee between the hope and jealousy that spark at the idea of Oliver not even being home, probably wrapped around Kara in her bed in her apartment.

He runs a frustrated hand through his hair, pulling at the strands. He makes for his room, intent on a hot shower and a fresh pair of clothes, but stops with the door to Oliver’s room bangs open abruptly. He freezes at the noise, and for a moment he’s nothing more than a startled statue.

Oliver looks like hell, a fact that is noted with satisfaction but an ugly part of his brain. The older man has his hair sticking up at odd angles, his eyes bloodshot. He’s still in the same clothes he wore yesterday, wrinkled like he got a very bad night of sleep in them.

“Oliver,” Barry acknowledges, voice hollow. 

Oliver flinches at the tone. “Barry,” he says, low and gentle as he hedges forward. Like approaching a frightened animal, ready to bolt at the slightest sign of a threat. Barry feels like just as much; his entire body is coiled tight, ready to spring out of the room, out the apartment and down the street if he needs to. 

“What you saw last night,” Oliver begins, and Barry feels bile start to climb his throat. Which, he thinks wryly, is better than tears. He’s so sick of crying. 

“I’m a big boy, Oliver,” he snaps, “I don’t need you to explain it to me.” 

“It wasn’t like that!” Oliver fires back. “We were drunk.”

“It’s fine,” Barry grumbles, beginning to make for the sanctity of his room. “It’s whatever. It’s college, right? People get drunk, hook up. Whatever, do what you want.”

“Barry -" Oliver reaches out, his face twisted into a handsomely devastated mask. The look alone has Barry pausing again, thrown off-kilter. He’s never seen the older man look so desperate before - it’s an achingly human emotion for someone with the face of an god. 

He opens his mouth, a retort on the tip of his tongue, but rapid knocking cuts him off. Relief washes over him as Oliver growls, turning on his heel to answer the door; he isn’t sure what he was going to say in that moment, just certain that he would regret it.

He hears Kara before he sees her. She pushes past Oliver, frantic as she asks, “Is he here? Did he come back?” 

She keeps repeating variations of these words until she catches sight of him, still slack-jawed and feet away from the safe isolation his room provides. Like Oliver, Kara is worse for wear; her face is red and splotchy underneath her glasses, her long hair wild and mussed. 

“Barry,” she breathes, rushing forward. She stops an arm length’s away, a hand twitching at her side. She’s restraining herself from moving forward, from offering her apologies in hugs and comforting hands, the best form of sorry she knows. 

“Kara,” Barry says, flinching at the crack in his voice. So weak, so vulnerable.

“It didn’t mean anything!” she blurts, pleading and tactless. Her hands clasp in front of her chest in a prayer, begging him to believe her. “After you left, everything started to go wrong. We kept getting beers for something to do, and eventually Sara just kicked us out so we came back here and talked. Talked about you.”

“About me?” Barry parrots, uncertainly.

Kara nods vigorously. “We both really, really like you Barry. It came up and we talked about it, but we were drunk and not thinking straight. We were waiting for you and things just…” She trails off; her lips tremble dangerously, digging a spike into the center of Barry’s chest.

“It got away from us,” Oliver adds quietly, stepping closer.

A stretch of time passes, Barry on one side, Oliver and Kara on the other. In that space, Barry’s head spins at what they’re trying to say - at the idea they’re proposing. Maybe it’s selfishness, but the three of them together doesn’t sound the slightest bit odd; it sounds like thing he’s been hoping for this entire time, but better. Because he didn’t have to choose. He didn’t have to think about being with one without the other. They’re a package deal.

“You really like me?” he asks them finally. His voice is small, nearly childish. It holds all the fragility he’s been carrying this entire time, mixed with the indescribable amount of hope that has suddenly been placed upon him.

Kara hiccups out a strangled laugh, sounding more like a sob. “Oh, _Barry._ ”

She launches herself into his arms, finally able to touch him. Her embrace is strong and solid, unwilling to let go. It takes a second for Barry to remember to reciprocate it, slowly moving his arms to cradle her to his chest. His face is partially buried in the untamed, lavender scented strands of her hair. He looks to through the thicket of blonde to take in Oliver’s face, cautious.

The older man looks the softest that Barry’s ever seen him, taking in the BarryKara tangle with a look of strong, unshakeable endearment.

Barry lifts an arm from Kara’s waist. He holds it out, palm up and fingers uncurled, waiting. 

Oliver hesitates for only a moment. Then he grabs it. 

Barry pulls him close, until Oliver molding into the shape of Kara’s body against his. All of them, a single being, a unified force of their own making.

 

**: : :**

 

They spend the rest of the day curled up in Barry’s bed, touching every part of each other they could reach. 

There’s things that need to be discussed, but the three of them push the responsibilities away to focus on just them, enjoying the moment. They're past the pining and the angst, safe secure in the triumph of finally being here, together. 

His bed is too small to fit all of them comfortably, so Kara pushes against the wall and Oliver threatens to go careening off the side, with him snugly tucked between them. It’s a crowded sensation, but Barry feels cozy instead of stuffed. It’s like floating in water that’s the perfect temperature - calming and eternally peaceful. He could float here forever, in between Oliver’s hands that grip him gently on his thighs, and Kara’s lips that kiss a feather-light trail between his shoulder blades and down his spine.

He’s fuzzy with happiness, aglow in their touch. 

It’s infinite.

**Author's Note:**

> based off this [post](http://smittenvigilantes.tumblr.com/post/154126034253/your-karivarry-headcanons-give-me-life-got-any). come say hey on my [tumblr](http://spideypetes.tumblr.com).
> 
> like my writing? buy my first book [here!](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1983447617/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1531446109&sr=8-1&keywords=women+of+questionable+morals)


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